One should never wear a skirt if you intend to walk through Central London. Maybe it's just a me thing here, but every time I decide to wear a skirt in this city, I get funny looks from passers-by. I'll be sat on the Tube reading my "Big Book of Early Modern Women" (Yes, I have one of these, and a right scintillating read it is too) and the person across from me is looking at me, or more to the point, they're looking at my legs in a really interesting manner, like I've just stepped off some rare and exotic planet where we all wear skirts with wiggly patterns and listen to the Lo-Fidelity Allstars (Their first album I hasten to add, I rediscovered this little lyrical gem whilst rooting around in my record collection, desperate for soothing sounds to help me get through work and remembered what a damn fine groove it had to it, and such astounding lyrics too, like "The disco bison likes the disco music," much like that new pop-warbling songstress Shakira whose lyrics in one of her songs goes apparently along the lines of "good thing my breasts are small and humble so you don't confuse them with mountains. Sheer genius!) Or, I could just be walking down the road near Uni, in my own blissful daydreams about me and the cute guy who sits next to me in my History of Political Thought class and what I could do to him using the newly learned Russian phrase of "strip to the waist" (it goes along the lines of "padova ya padovnayen in case you're interested or if you're ever in a compromising position with a Russian) when I catch someone walking past me, looking at my skirt and then looking at me in an interesting way. It never happens when my friend Mazda wears a skirt which she does practically everyday, so why me I ask? It used to be if you didn't wear a skirt in polite society you got funny looks. Maybe I just have amazing legs, maybe I AM an alien from a distant exotic planet and I haven't realised it yet. Or maybe I just look amazingly rough in a skirt. Who knows? Not that I've really had much of an excuse to go out looking good in a skirt recently. This Cola-Cube has the end of term blues, stemming from the fact that she's poor (yes, I know it's my own bloody fault because I decided to buy a Glastonbury ticket now to make sure that it didn't all sell out on me instead of waiting until I had worked over Easter and therefore could afford the damn thing. Oh well, I'm going now. Is anyone else out of interest? Maybe we could all have a little Sinister Glastonbury meet-up and have a picnic on the hills overlooking Sommerset and I could eat noodles again like I do every time I go to a festival.), has too much work (one 5,000 word essay on Religion in Latin America and another 2,500 one of Political philosophy both due in in two weeks time. Ick). I think it's just this time of year that's getting everybody down, we're all tired and fed up of bad things swooping down on us like black clouds when we're not expecting it, like ex boyfriends and phone bills. Part of me wants to get into bed and sleep off the fatigue that I can't seem to get rid of, no matter how long I sleep for. It just seems that the alarm clock is always there on the periphery waiting to physically shake me quite hard so I can't drift off into dreamy land for too long because just as things start getting good, I'll hear that beep-beepy noise telling me I have to get my foppish little Indie-girl ass out of bed and actually do things that are worthy instead of sitting around and reading the trashy romance novels that I found in my friend's kitchen the other night and drinking tea which is what I really want to do. My little Sixteen year old baby brother is coming to visit me next weekend because he, like me at that point, has gotten fed up of Manchester and GCSE's and the muggy grey weather which sticks to your clothes and you can smell in your hair (and oooh my tape player appears to want to be remixing Jeff Buckley. It sounds rather good, but I'm sure it shouldn't be doing this). At least he's not avidly mixing Atari Teenage Riot with his Belle and Sebastian which if I remember rightly was what I was doing at his age, along with a great number of things that I shouldn't really mention here It's not too bad I suppose, I got my Belle and Sebastian ticket for Manchester through the other day and I found out that my band have got more recording time over Easter before our guitarist goes off travelling around America (we were reviewed in both the Oxford and London student newspapers if anyone's interested. The Oxford review compared us to Gorky's, before labelling us "aural torture" (I was quite proud about that) but the London one was lovely and said nice things, so maybe we're not all that terrible really we can but hope. And it's Track and Field next Friday too, a club night where you can usually see me and my friends bouncing around the dance floor like maniacs, running up and down the staircase to see which floor is currently playing the best music (which afterwards makes you realise that it's called Track and Field for a bloody good reason), and produces pictures of you and your friend brandishing a shoe and neither of you can remember why Still, I send my love and commiserations to all of you whose parade is being rained on at the moment. Especially Gordon ooh, that's mighty rough having your wallet stolen with your Belle and Sebastian ticket inside. I saw the strangest thing today myself regarding interesting homeless people. I was walking to Uni so that I could use the library (I know, I know...a first year actively going into University on a Sunday so she can use the library! Shocking, isn't it?) and I was walking up Tottenham Court Road when I saw this old lady hanging off a lampost just pointing and screaming abuse in her own made-up language at the passers-by. People just kept looking at her strangely as they walked past and she screamed and ranted about what I really couldn't say. I couldn't help wondering why she was stood there on the Tottenham Court Road on a Sunday doing this instead of being at home and what had led her to stand there, babbling and screaming like a child. Did some immense tragedy shake her life and this was her escape mechanism? Was she drunk, consumed by grief, or just in her own little world where she felt like a trapped animal and lashing out at the world was her only way to deal with the situation she found herself in? I know how she felt and I sympathised because there are times when I just want to stand and point at the world and scream at it too for making things go wrong and hurting people I love and generally at times making me hurt and ache with sadness all over. I wanted to go to the Accident and Emergency department at UCH which wasn't too far away and get someone to help her, but by the time I came out of the shop I was in, she had gone. Strange how things like that make us stop and think for a while. After all, there are multitudes of strange people in this city, but for some reason I can't help wondering why she was screaming, and if she had children and if they were thinking about their mum today. Who can say? Maybe it's not my place to ask. If I can make the summer last longer if I stay up all night, that means that for half of my Summer I'll be hyperactive through sleep deprivation and the other half comatose as a result. What a heartening thought. Love and amusing Russian phrases, Cay Cola-Cube XXx P.S. Waves and hugs to lovely Michael my friend in the nursery who calls me McDermott (which I find rather sweet in an endearingly old-fashioned kind of way), and who will no doubt amaze you all with his linguistic prowess once he's allowed out of there to wreak a path of havoc across the Sinister world "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your Revolution..." -Emma Goldman +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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